About a mile before dawn Homer’s
rosy fingers scrape away the dense
shroud and the day combs her
piny hair and my hens
complain that chaos has come again,
but nobody listens. The school bus
gapes for its half-shod contents,
unbuttoned and unbreakfasted. For us
who stay behind and wave, excess syllables
sift down. They have not changed the time.
Yellow needles fall on the table
to sort and arrange and rhyme.
A ragged string of geese goes by,
marks of ink on a paper sky.
Smoky Quartz 